H. M. Pulham, Esquire

by John P. Marquand

  “Strangers?” I said. “They’re harder to get on with.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Kay said, “that puts your whole philosophy in a nutshell, Harry: always being careful, always being safe, only wanting to see the same people because it isn’t any effort, always being dull.”

  I began to pick up the last of the books, Father’s set of Plutarch’s Lives. I knew that she was tired or she would not have spoken that way, and I suppose I was tired too or I should not have resented it. For some reason nothing that I had done that day was right. Ever since I had arrived, before Kay and Bill had gone out to lunch, there had been something vaguely wrong between us, something in the way she had looked at me, something in the way we had both spoken.

  “Maybe I am dull,” I told her, “but you’ve had an interesting day. Bill King isn’t dull, is he?”

  “What do you mean by that?” Kay asked.

  “I don’t mean anything, Kay,” I answered. “Except I’ve been being a chauffeur when I haven’t been a handyman and a nursemaid.”

  “And what do you think I’ve been,” Kay asked, “for years and years and years?”

  I picked up two of the Plutarch volumes and got up on a chair and put them on the shelf. Kay was sitting with her hands clenched in her lap, looking back over the years, and I certainly did not want to start going over them.

  “Well, you’ve certainly had time off,” I said.

  “How do you mean, time off?”

  “Well, take today,” I said. “You’ve been having lunch with Bill King.” Kay began to speak and I raised my voice. “Now wait a minute, Kay,” I said. “I’m not finding any fault. I’m awfully glad you had a good time with Bill, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have liked to have seen him too. Now, wait and just think if it’s fair. I do all the work, and then you complain that I’m dull. Maybe I am, but some people don’t think so.”

  “Why can’t you ever let anything go?” Kay asked. “I just make a perfectly casual remark, and then you bring in Bill King for no reason at all. If I had thought for a minute that you minded, I’d have taken all those damned things out of the automobile myself. I’d have taken the children to lunch. You could have gone to lunch with Bill.”

  It was like so many other quarrels. Now that we were right in the middle of it I could not understand exactly how it had started.

  “I didn’t say I minded it, Kay,” I said. “If Bill’s more interesting than I am, I can’t help it, can I?”

  “Then don’t keep going on about it,” Kay said. “You make an issue out of everything.”

  “Now, Kay,” I told her, “I’m not making an issue out of anything. You won’t let me finish what I am trying to say.”

  “You’ve said it all hundreds of times, thousands of times. You’re right and I’m wrong. You’re sweet and patient, and—”

  “Kay,” I said, “please let’s stop,” and I closed the door into the hall. I suppose I shouldn’t have, because of course it made her angry, since it implied that she had lost her temper and that I hadn’t.

  “Open that door,” Kay said. “Don’t try to make a scene.”

  “Kay,” I said, “please, let’s stop.”

  Kay drew a deep, harsh breath, and we both stopped, and there was something that was sad in the silence. I could hear the clock on my desk ticking and noises in the back yards. It was beginning to grow dark and I pressed the light switch for the table and desk lamps.

  “My God,” Kay said, “I wonder why we ever got married.”

  We had said it all before. We had wondered before, again and again, why we had ever got married.

  I was holding Volume III of Plutarch’s Lives. It seemed to me that its binding was getting shaky, though goodness knows, I had hardly looked at Plutarch since I was in college. I opened the book, and two leaves of writing paper fluttered onto the carpet.

  “Why, it’s a letter,” Kay said. She picked up a page, and then I remembered. That was where I had kept those two letters from Marvin Myles which I should have burned up long ago. Kay was holding the sheet of paper under the light. Her face had changed. Her voice had changed.

  “Why, Harry,” she said, “oh, Harry! It’s a love letter!”

  I might have known that she would find out about those letters some day, because Kay always found out everything which I tried to hide. It was just what had happened when I had bought her a jeweled wrist watch once for Christmas. Just by accident she had thumbed through my checkbook, and just by accident she had run upon the jeweler’s name and price and everything. It was the same thing when I had tried to surprise her with a new fur coat. The furrier, in a state of mental aberration, sent the bundle to me at the house instead of to the office, and Kay opened it without thinking. There would always be some little accident which turned up anything I tried to hide.

  But when I saw her holding that letter, it certainly did not seem like an accident, but rather as if it were always meant to happen.

  “My dearest, dearest darling,” Kay was reading. “Why, Harry, who ever sent you that?”

  If her voice had been kind, I might not have minded.

  “I’ve been thinking of you all day long, and I’ll think of you all tonight even when I’m asleep.” Kay paused and gave a quick, sharp laugh. Her reading became mincing and precise. “I keep wondering how you look and what you are saying and whether you are wearing your rubbers. I keep thinking of little things I could do for you. I never knew that you could get into my system like this, so that I don’t seem to be one person any more, but part of me always seems to be with you …”

  “Kay,” I said, “give me that letter.”

  Kay stood up and put the letter behind her back.

  “Why, Harry,” she said, “I wish you could see yourself! Why, what did you do to her to make her write to you like that?”

  “Give me that letter, Kay,” I said. “It hasn’t got anything to do with you.”

  She backed away when I reached out my hand.

  “Oh?” she said. “I suppose that’s why you hid it.”

  I spoke slowly and distinctly.

  “It’s none of your business and I won’t have you read it,” I said.

  I could tell from the way she looked at me that I had lost all sense of perspective and proportion.

  “Oh, won’t you?” she said. “Well, I’m going to find out who it is.”

  “Kay—” I began.

  “Well, who is it?” Kay asked.

  “Never mind who,” I said.

  “Well,” Kay said, “I know who. It’s that thin, overdressed girl from New York, isn’t it?” Kay’s voice broke into a strident laugh. “And she wondered if you wore your rubbers!”

  She had only seen Marvin Myles once at a football game and once that time at Westwood. It had never occurred to me that anyone could possibly remember. Marvin and I had been by the fire at Westwood and Kay had been walking in the woods with Bill King.

  “Kay,” I said, “I should have burnt that letter long ago. Now, give it to me, please.”

  “Why, Harry,” Kay said, “you’re still in love with her!”

  “How do you mean,” I asked, “I’m still in love with her? Why, I haven’t seen her for years.”

  “Do you think you’d act the way you are if you weren’t?” Kay said. “Why can’t you be frank and confess you’re in love with her? She’s crazy about you. She’s always been.”

  “Look here, Kay,” I said. “How do you know? Who ever told you anything about Marvin Myles?”

  “That’s just like you to be surprised,” she said.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Who told you?”

  “Why, Bill King of course,” she said.

  I could not believe it. She had obviously said it only because she was angry and I could see already that she was sorry.

  “He never did,” I said. “Bill’s a gentleman. Give me that letter.”

  Kay backed away from me. I did not want to be rough, but she was not to have that letter. I took her h
and in both of mine and began opening her fingers.

  “You’re hurting me,” she said.

  “Then give it to me,” I answered.

  It was the first time that Kay and I had ever been through anything like that. The letter fell on the floor and she wrenched her hand away.

  “Oh, take your damned letter,” she said.

  Before I could speak she had jerked open the library door. Then she was in the hall and she had slammed the door in my face. I heard the telephone in the parlor ringing. It rang four times before Kay answered it.

  “Oh, Mrs. Smithfield,” Kay was saying, “I’m so glad to hear your voice. No, I’m not a bit busy.… Yes, we had a lovely summer.… Why, let me see—Friday?… Why, no, we’re not doing anything at all. We’d love to come to dinner.”

  XXXIII

  Rhinelander Four—

  I stooped and picked up the letter. I could not remember ever having been so angry. It was like pulling a thread and having a whole piece of cloth unravel.

  What shook me most, however, was not my anger. It was not conceivable that I could be in love with Marvin Myles after twenty years. For periods of months I had never thought of her. It was preposterous to suppose that I could keep on loving someone who was so little in my thoughts. I had finished everything with Marvin when I married Kay, erased it all from my mind, like a problem in geometry from the blackboard at school. I had never looked at anyone else after I married Kay, but perhaps even when I had not thought of her Marvin had been there; and then there had been times when I had called her back deliberately into my thoughts. She had come to me on sleepless nights. She had walked with me invisibly, and I had lived over every hour we had known together. Perhaps this had been wrong, but I do not see how I could have helped it. She was with me again now that I held the letter, and the strange, the awful thing about it was that Marvin Myles, whom I had not seen for nearly twenty years, was more real to me at the moment than my own wife. This did not seem possible with Kay still talking in the parlor, but it was so. Marvin Myles seemed to be so close to me that I could touch her, and now I wanted her to be there. I knew every word of that letter of hers by heart, and now I found myself reading over a part of it I liked best, and I could hear her voice speaking all the words.

  You know, don’t you, that I’m only running on this way because I love you? And if you love someone and can’t do anything about it, it makes you awfully helpless. All I can do is to make you think, when you’re up there all alone, that it isn’t so bad if you know you have someone, someone forever and always, someone you can always come back to, dear, any time or anywhere.…

  Now Kay had never said anything like that to me. I wondered if it were true that she was still waiting for me—any time or anywhere. It was as though I were back already, as though nothing else had mattered, as though the only time that I had ever lived was that little while. I folded the letter carefully, and then I kissed it. The pages smelled old and musty like the pages of the Plutarch.

  I knew it was time for me to take hold of myself when I found myself kissing that letter, but I wanted to look at her again and to talk to her again—just once.

  When I realized what I was thinking, its absurdity began to bring me to my senses. Yet I could reach for the telephone and call her.…

  What I needed was some exercise and a good cold shower. I straightened my coat and put up the last volumes of Plutarch and opened the library door. Kay must have been waiting for the door to open, because she called as soon as she heard me. She was sitting on the parlor sofa with her engagement calendar on her knee.

  “Harry,” Kay asked, “where are you going?”

  Her voice meant that she was going to be nice again, but somehow it made no difference.

  “I’m just going over to the Squash Club,” I told her. “I want to get some exercise.”

  “Why, darling,” Kay said, “you’ve been exercising all day.”

  “I have to sign up for the autumn bumping tournament,” I said.

  “But, Harry,” Kay said, “it’s nearly half-past six. You’ll be late for dinner.”

  “I’m going out for dinner,” I said.

  “Oh, Harry, dear,” Kay said, “please! Please, don’t take it out on me. We’re having a very special dinner. We’re having a big steak.”

  “I’m going out, Kay,” I said.

  “Oh, Harry,” Kay said, “please!”

  She was implying that I was being unreasonable, and I suppose I was. Given a little time, I should come back as though nothing had happened and pick it all up again.

  “No,” I said, “I’m going out.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Kay, “if you want to act like a child. But, Harry—”

  I did not answer her, because at the moment there was nothing I could say. I wished that she were not being so nice about it, but there was nothing I could say. Most of the bundles I had taken out of the car were still piled in the front hall. Bitsey was waiting at the door to go out, but I did not care.

  “Kay,” I called.

  “Yes,” she answered, “yes, Harry.”

  “Bitsey wants to go out,” I called. “You’d better take him.”

  “Yes,” she called, “all right, Harry.”

  I could not help thinking it was very unusual. It was very nice of Kay.

  The rooms of the Squash Club had been freshly decorated downstairs and they were deserted, as I supposed they would be, since it was so early in the season. In the main room the heads of a moose, an antelope and a zebra looked down on some comfortable chairs and on a big table, covered with newspapers and periodicals. The headline of the evening paper showed that the Poles were getting whipped. The German Army was rolling them up and the Allies weren’t helping. Unlike home, the room had no difficult associations, no reminders of duty or responsibility. I did not know where the moose- and antelope- and zebra-heads came from and if the moths began to eat them up it would not have mattered. It was a healthy and pleasant feeling just to be out of the house and over at the Squash Club. I rang the bell by the fireplace and when no one answered I began shouting for Louis. Pretty soon Louis came in a clean white coat and I asked him how he was and what kind of summer he had had. Louis said the summer had been fine, but it was nice to get back to town.

  “Is anybody here?” I asked.

  “No, sir,” Louis said, “except Mr. Boomer. Mr. Boomer might give you a game.”

  “No, no, Louis,” I said. “Is Gus upstairs? Just call up to him that I want to play for half an hour, and I want to stay for dinner.”

  My sneakers and shorts were wrapped in newspaper and my racket was in good condition. Everything was always all right at the Club. I carried all the things into the dressing room, and there was Mr. Boomer sitting on one of the benches in his shorts pulling on his socks. Mr. Boomer was always working to keep his muscles in tone and to keep his weight down. He was burned a mahogany color by summer sun baths, but sun baths or exercise, Mr. Boomer’s weight was catching up on him. I wondered if it would ever be like that with me.

  “Hello, Harry,” Mr. Boomer said, and we shook hands. “Just back, are you? Did you have a good summer?”

  That was what everyone would be asking me for the next two weeks, and what I would be asking everyone else, and every one of us would have had a good summer.

  “Yes,” I said, “a fine summer.”

  “So did I,” Mr. Boomer said. “There’s nothing like the sun. I took off two inches.”

  Mr. Boomer did not look as though he had taken off anything.

  “What are you looking at?” Mr. Boomer asked. “I suppose you think it doesn’t show. Well, I only weigh fifteen pounds more than I did in the bow at New London.”

  The one thing I did not want was to hear Mr. Boomer talk about that boat race.

  “And I’m going to have another inch off by the first of the month,” Mr. Boomer said. “I’ve been on the rowing machine all the afternoon. Are you staying for dinner?”

  “Yes,”
I said.

  “I thought you were married. How did you get away?”

  “We’re just moving in,” I said.

  “Oh, that’s it, is it?” Mr. Boomer said.

  I felt that I ought to explain it a little further, so that Mr. Boomer would understand that it was absolutely a matter of household convenience that made me come for dinner, but I had no time because Gus came in. Gus was a first-rate squash professional whose nose showed that he had once been a pugilist. I shook hands with Gus.

  “We’ll take Number One court,” Gus said. “She’s got all new lights. Did you have a nice summer, Mr. Pulham?”

  “Yes,” I said, “a fine summer. Did you?”

  “Yeah,” Gus said, “fine. The wife had twins.”

  “Well,” I said, “that’s something.”

  “Yeah,” Gus said. “I’ll say so. All ready? Let’s go, Mr. Pulham.”

  We trotted up the stairs through the corridor to the Number One court. I still could not stop thinking about Marvin Myles, and what I needed was a good stiff workout, and Gus was the boy to give it to me. The black ball went up against the white wall, whang, whang, whang, like a bullet.

  “Six–five,” Gus said, “let’s go, Mr. Pulham.”

  I could see Gus out of the corner of my eye. I had always been able to give him a good game. I was not, thank God, getting fat and heavy. The ball came off the back wall and I slammed it into a corner. It pulled Gus out of position and I passed him on the next shot.

  “Yow,” Gus shouted, and rapped his racket on the wall. I could not tell whether Gus had let me get the point on purpose or not, but I did not think so. I remembered what the Skipper said. He used to say, When you play a game, play it with all your heart and soul. I was playing it that way, but just the same part of me was somewhere else with Marvin Myles. Wham, the ball went. It bounced off the back wall and the side wall. It came out of the corners to my forehand and my backhand, but she was always there.

  I remembered the time that I had told her that I loved her.

  “Someone you can always come back to, dear, any time or anywhere.”

  “Yow,” Gus shouted.